Food and Life…Meanderings of a Woman of a Certain Age

Tag Archives: Mennonite

When the kids were little (and truth be told, even before we had kids) we loved taking an overnight trip into Pennsylvania Dutch country. (Did you know that they are really of German origin, not Dutch…the Dutch being an Americanization of Deutsch.) We’d hit every attraction and our favorite place to stay was the Red Caboose Motel…made up entirely of—you guessed it—cabooses. The restaurant was a restored dining car that even was set up to rock and move like an actual train.

We had two favorite dining spots. An all you can eat “Amish” buffet http://www.millerssmorgasbord.com/ and a farm restaurant whose name I can no longer recall, where dessert was always served first!

Naturally, with my obsession with cookbooks, I purchased several Amish and Mennonite cookbooks, with recipes notable for their heartiness and simplicity. I’ve made many of the recipes over the years, and adapted them to our taste. But one that is another family staple is corn pudding. The Daughter would always ask for “the corn stuff”, yet another sweet side dish.

When I emailed the kids this year’s Thanksgiving menu, asking them if there was anything I omitted, she immediately emailed back “mom, make the corn stuff.” I said you mean the corn pudding, and her reply was “It will always be corn stuff to me.”